John W. Williams II: Robotics, Electronics, Mechanics

Confessions of an Engineering Washout

Wed, 28 Sep 2005 22:38:20 GMT

Confessions of an Engineering Washout I bailed out of Aerospace Engineering, yet I now work in the fairly technical field of Software Engineering which I mostly learned on my own. I find some truth in this article. Given any desired outcome, the environment, and the system need to be taken into consideration, in terms of how they may affect the final product.

Fri, 15 Oct 2004 23:00:40 GMT

New propulsion concept could make 90-day Mars round trip possible. Under the mag-beam concept, a space-based station would generate a stream of magnetized ions that would interact with a magnetic sail on a spacecraft and propel it through the solar system at high speeds that increase with the size of the plasma beam. Winglee estimates that a control nozzle 32 meters wide would generate a plasma beam capable of propelling a spacecraft at 11.7 kilometers per second. That translates to more than 26,000 miles an hour or more than 625,000 miles a day. But to make such high speeds practical, another plasma unit must be stationed on a platform at the other end of the trip to apply brakes to the spacecraft. Hmm. It seems to me the failure of one of these "braking" stations could lead to an in flight space tragedy ala David Bowie's "Major Tom".

Fri, 08 Oct 2004 09:42:37 GMT

English "Microlight Instructor" and hackgineer Andy Tyler, age 35, father of 2 built a pulse jet engine out of instructions he got off the internet and attached it to a shopping cart he retrieved from a river. The liquid fueled engine glows red hot at temperatures up to 600 C. - hot enough to require a heat shield between the engine and the driver. His description: It can't go on roads, runs out of fuel after two minutes and at over 50mph becomes unstable. People think I'm off my trolley but it's exhilarating.

Amateur engineering is the wave of the future, and a revival of the past...

Interesting Online Audio/Video! ENTRY THREE

Tue, 06 Jul 2004 07:05:42 GMT

Well, it isn't so much the video as the subject in this case. This guy in Germany is engaging in some interesting rocketry experiments with water pressure powered rockets, home made using soda bottles.

I have seen kits for these things in toy stores, but I figured somebody must have a page on how to make them. I found this page while searching google with a string like "water rocket homemade". And of course sasuga internet - there are many pages on this topic.

I haven't mentioned it to many people, but part of my philosophy on life now seems to include creating / building / fabricating things by myself as much as possible. It is mostly a dream as I lack a lot of the required tools and motivation, but yet I still pursue it. I think it has something to do with the frustrated engineer in me.

I sure would like to build some water rockets...

Thu, 22 Apr 2004 18:27:17 GMT

Wheeled "Octopus" Robot platform has tactile sensors in the wheels. Pictures demonstrate how this system can overcome various obstacles. From L'Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Lausanne, Switzerland. (found via Boing Boing)

Sun, 04 Apr 2004 19:21:48 GMT

Pictures from the DARPA Grand Challenge

2004 Robolympics

Fri, 26 Mar 2004 09:28:19 GMT

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We went to the Robolympics on Sunday, 21 March 2004 at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, California, USA.

Fort Mason Center is a complex of warehouse buildings on piers by the bay in San Francisco. (Upper Fort Mason is a now a Park & Residential area.) Inside the middle warehouse building, was the Herbst Pavilion - site of the Robolympics 2004. It was a sunny day, but the "natural air conditioner" of San Francisco was running: a cold breeze blew in from the Bay, making it a little chilly outside.

The production quality of the ROBOlympics was less than perfect. My wife told me she was a little disappointed with it shortly after we got there. But this is an engineers / geek event...the most important focus is Robots, not event design. Near the entrance, there were folding tables set out with various types of robots on display, including products for sale by the "Robot Store" and other vendors.

Just beyond that were the locations for the smaller scale robotic events. You may not know that there are many different fields of robot competition, and many different robot designs for each of them. There were very simple BEAM type robots (for example: "Photovores" that compete to move to a location on a table with the most light.) Lego Robots (mostly line following robots, which use a sensor to follow a line - fastest time wins the event), Sumo robots - which struggle to push one another out of circlular table top arena, Soccer playing robots - teams of robots controlled by computers that monitor the action by video camera from above, fire fighting robots - which navigate a maze and find where a fire is, and the most traditionally humanoid robot like: boxing & wrestling robots (primarily from Japanese participants.)

In the center of the building, was the main attraction - which took the most space and made the most noise : the Robot Combat event (as seen on TV in the form of Robot Wars / Battle Bots / Robotica, etc.) This consists of remotely controlled fighting robots - some heavily armored and equipped with mechanical weapons like saw blades, hammers, lifting arms, or spinning bodies. These combat robots bash against each other, competing to knock their opponent out of commission, or at least to win by demonstrating superior aggression. The robots battle it out inside a large square arena, fenced in by a steel framed wall with Lexan plastic windows (which are very scratched and scuffed, making it difficult to take pictures of the battle.)

Like most sporting events, it is more impressive and exciting to see robot combat in person. Even my wife began to show interest after a few noisy & violent robot battles. She began to make bets with my daughter on which robot would win. It's scary when a heavyweight robot gets flung up against the Lexan windows of the arena only 2 meters away from where you are sitting. There were loud crashes, and flashes of sparks. After some battles, one of the staff threw a piece of broken metal to the crowd. The combat event was narrated by a wrestling announcer style guy wearing a tuxedo. It's too bad that this is the style of presentation that has become popularized in the U.S. I prefer the U.K. style of emphasizing more of the engineering prowess of the participants, rather than the U.S. style of appeal to the lowest common denominator.

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In the back of the building were the "Pits" where teams participating in the combat events were working on their combat machines.

My two daughters showed a lot of interest in all the robots. They wanted to look at more robot pictures on the internet after we went home. My older daughter suggested we should build one. That's just the kind of thing a dad wants to hear!

I took more photos and video, but Boing Boing has logged many links to other sites photo galleries of the event, with more and better pictures than the ones I took. Here are a few links:

ffwd blog
Matthew Bennet's Photoblog
Chris Pederick's ROBOlympics photos
Mimizone
Laughing Squid
gism.net
vortis.com
radical pixels - If you look closely, you can see us in a few of the pictures

Sat, 20 Mar 2004 00:58:04 GMT

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Robolympics event takes place all day Saturday and Sunday, 20 & 21 March in San Francisco at Fort Mason. I hope to go check it out. Maybe I'll even log some photos here

Fri, 19 Mar 2004 06:23:34 GMT

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If you haven't checked out the Mars Rover page at NASA you should do so now. (And don't ever tell me you're a "geek" if you are not interested in this!) Go get yourself a pair of red/blue 3D glasses (I have some left over from taking my daughters to Spy Kids 3D), and check out the 3D stuff.

There is another site which aggregates Mars Rover Images published by NASA.

It's incredible to see the hi-res images from Mars. They really let you get that "you are there" feeling, What do you think? Should there be a priority for a manned mission to Mars, or is robotic exploration enough?

Fri, 05 Mar 2004 08:33:36 GMT

At the recent party for the departure of Mr. Warmth on his journey to walk the earth, Flex Solo/Kickstand mentioned wanting to stop by somewhere on his next trip to San Diego con, to check out some powered exoskeleton project. Lots of exiting links came out in the last few days related to that very topic. Some of the videos remind me of Science Fiction movies like Robocop, or AI, where they show the video of early experiments that lead to those crazy robot powered adventures. But these are real...

Video from Cornell Labs of walking machines - via Low Life Labs. The first walking contraption shown in the video is purely kinetic - no powered movement.
BLEEX -Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton is a device to enable someone to carry heavy loads.
And an oldie but goody, from Y2K: gasoline-powered boots that let you run up to 25Mph, with 13 foot strides

Wed, 04 Feb 2004 23:10:48 GMT

Rokenbok makes the coolest toys.

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Tue, 29 Jul 2003 01:41:34 GMT

Robotic exploration of Earth!

A joint project of NASA and several participating Universities, to develop Robotic Astrobiology: consisting of a robotic exploration vehicle which roams the Chilean Atacama Desert, the most arid region on Earth looking for signs of life.

Tue, 08 Jul 2003 23:22:47 GMT

Gladiator Robot Looks to Join Marine Corps

The USMC is developing a robot which employs non-lethal weapons against "angry crowds". Much is made of the sinister aspect of this new development, but it seems to me an improvement over the current military means of crowd control: deploying a bunch of nervous 18 year olds with live ammunition in their guns, and telling them not to shoot anyone unless shot at first. These robots will probably be very intimidating, even if all they do is make a lot of smoke and noise.

Tue, 08 Jul 2003 09:34:43 GMT

'Spacewalk squad' joins humans and robots

Humans and robots worked side-by-side this summer at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston to evaluate the concept of using human-robotic teams to improve the productivity of astronauts working outside the International Space Station, other space vehicles, or on the surface of other planets.

Sun, 22 Jun 2003 07:37:00 GMT

Modular Reconfigurable Robotics

Modular Reconfigurable Robotics is an approach to building robots for various complex tasks. Instead of designing a new and different mechanical robot for each task, you just build many copies of one simple module. The module can't do much by itself, but when you connect many of them together you get a system that can do complicated things. In fact, a modular robot can even reconfigure itself -- change its shape by moving its modules around -- to meet the demands of different tasks or different working environments.

Wed, 21 May 2003 19:20:08 GMT

A DIY Cruise Missile

a project to build a "relatively sophisticated cruise missile using off-the-shelf components and materials"

Fri, 09 May 2003 18:57:57 GMT

Science Applications International Corp.

Business 2.0: In the Company of Spies
It's the largest private IT firm in the nation. It's turned a profit for 33 straight years. And it's on the front lines of the war on terror. So why haven't you heard of SAIC?

Mon, 13 Jan 2003 21:30:29 GMT

Blue Sky Hy-Way: A drive in GM's Hy-Wire offers a clear view of the road ahead

Autoweek online reviews GM's new hydrogen fuel cell - drive by wire concept car (which uses the "skateboard" chassis introduced in 2002.)

Mon, 13 Jan 2003 20:08:31 GMT

Start-up offers mass-market robot tech

Evolution, the same company that offers a product to turn a customer supplied laptop into a free roving robot platform, has debuted what it describes as revolutionary and inexpensive technology to enable a robot to locate its position within its environment (not GPS position, but where in a room or building, for example.) Evolution claims their new system will enable numerous low cost robotics products for the consumer level.

"the system creates a map of a space from the distance and direction that its wheels travel and from objects it recognises with its camera and software. A robot equipped with the technology can use the data from its wheels and camera images to keep track of its location."

Wed, 01 Jan 2003 09:30:55 GMT

Beijing University of Science and Engineering has developed a robot that can play Taichi - it has no attached cables and is able to self balance over changing levels of terrain.

Making a machine "play Taichi" is not that impressive considering that Taichi is basically a series of predetermined moves (like "Kata" in Karate) - but since the robot is not tethered to anything, and assuming it performs some of the more unbalanced moves in Taichi (like raising one leg) it would demonstrate a good balance control mechanism. But the one legged hopping robots, as pioneered at MIT are pretty impressive balancers too.

Thu, 26 Dec 2002 20:01:02 GMT

iRobot is a company founded by MIT graduates, which produces among other things: Roomba: the "intelligent floorvac", Pyramid Rover: a robot to explore the Great Pyramid, and the PackBot series of military robots (already used in Afghanistan.)

Wed, 11 Dec 2002 20:07:35 GMT

Honda announced a new version of its humanoid robot Asimo

The new model, which Honda plans to begin leasing next month, can greet and recognize people, as well as perform advanced commands such as moving in the direction indicated by reading hand gestures.

If asked, it can even provide real-time information such as the weather by tapping into the Internet or other network sources.

Asimo is 4 feet tall, and resembles an astronaut, complete with bubble face plate and large backpack.

Wed, 20 Nov 2002 08:26:04 GMT

Jam.app Jam is a Mac OS X application which remotely controls Aibo

Thu, 14 Nov 2002 07:49:57 GMT

Banryu robotic guard dragon from Japan (joint venture between Sanyo and "Tmsuk Co.".)

Thu, 07 Nov 2002 20:35:21 GMT

Killing probes the frontiers of robotics and legality

The US was accused last night of summarily executing the six alleged al-Qaida members killed in Yemen on Sunday by the first act of what experts say could be a new age of "robotic warfare".

As the embarrassed Yemeni government remained tight-lipped about the assasination on its soil more details emerged of how an unmanned CIA predator drone found the six men in a car and killed them with a Hellfire missile.

This would be remarkable pre-9/11, but clearly the war on terrorism is a war against an enemy without a clearly defined enemy territory. Is that not obvious?

What was once assassination is now an attack against enemy combatants, regardless of their geographical location. It is a terrible thing that 9/11 unleashed upon us. Can we put that genie back in the bottle?

That robots are slaying people by our command sounds remarkable at first and reminiscent of SF stories I read in my youth, but memory tells me this is hardly new. The Nazis deployed remote controlled exploding tankettes in World War II. Guided/cruise missiles have been around for a long time (not to mention ICBMs.)

Perhaps what is new here is that we can send robots to operate covertly inside the boundaries of other Nations with less worry of having one of our own people caught or killed while doing some dirty work. If the robots have no identifying marks, that would be even more politically tempting - "plausible deniability."

Deniability is mentioned as one of the appealing features of airborne laser weapons, which can silently and accurately destroy a target without leaving any bits that say "made in U.S.A" behind.

The assertion that the attack inside Yemeni territory is the first time a nation has had its sovereignty violated by unauthorized acts of war is also silly. Didn't we bomb Sudan's aspirin factory just a few years ago? Didn't we lob cruise missiles against Bin Laden in Afghanistan without asking the Taliban?